Red-Letter Day for MTA

As subway rides go, the nine-minute trip was a marvel: no panhandlers, plenty of empty seats, and a bevy of MTA officials aboard to make sure the train ran like clockwork.

But the real milestone was that the North Hollywood leg of the Metro Red Line, a $1.3-billion project that took nearly eight years to build, had finally reached the San Fernando Valley. As the four-car train pulled out of the North Hollywood station--its first semipublic run, a media tour full of reporters wearing hard hats--a cluster of MTA workers let out a cheer.

“I’m tremendously satisfied,” said Charles Stark, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s project manager, as the train dived under the Cahuenga Pass, reaching speeds of 69 mph. “I’m looking forward to the thousands and thousands of people we’ll be carrying from the Los Angeles Basin to the San Fernando Valley, especially on rainy days like today.”

Some 900 feet above, rain soaked the Santa Monica Mountains. Cars crawled along the Hollywood Freeway, sluicing their way over the hills. Windshield wipers revealed only misty gray sky.

The view wasn’t much better down below. Dark walls flashed by, with glimpses of blue fluorescent light punctuating the journey. The route will remain off-limits to passengers for the next few months as engineers test the system’s ventilation, signals and other equipment.

When it opens to the public sometime in June, the $4.5-billion Red Line will have 16 stations spanning 17.4 miles. The commute from North Hollywood to Union Station will take 27 minutes. The trio of stations on the last leg--Hollywood/Highland, Universal City and North Hollywood--are also slated to open in June.

“We consider it the jewel of the system,” Stark said, noting that the North Hollywood extension is about $10 million under budget so far. The MTA expects to handily beat the federal December deadline for opening the segment, he added.

The 6.3-mile subway segment linking the Valley to downtown is the last one Los Angeles will see in the foreseeable future. In 1998, voters fed up with MTA construction problems and cost overruns approved a ballot measure that effectively ended new subway projects.

Once upon a time, subway planners envisioned trains rocketing under the Valley floor, all the way to Warner Center. Then, as the money-gobbling subway fell out of political favor, plans were scaled back to Sepulveda Boulevard. In the end, the trains will stop at North Hollywood.

MTA officials expect 18,000 riders to climb aboard the North Hollywood segment each day. It remains to be seen just how much the subway will nibble away at traffic jams on the Hollywood Freeway, the third-busiest in Los Angeles County with 325,000 vehicles per day. But transit officials contend that alternatives like the subway are needed to stave off gridlock on the freeways.

About $1 million of artwork went into the subway stations along the final Red Line segment, said Maya Emsden, the agency’s Metro Art director.

In North Hollywood, bright tiles depict slices of Valley history. There’s Amelia Earhart, a onetime Toluca Lake resident, sitting atop her prized Lockheed Electra; the El Portal Theater; citrus groves and palm trees and classic cars with racy fins.

The Universal City station pays tribute to the nearby Campo de Cahuenga, the spot where military leaders signed the 1847 treaty that ended the Mexican-American War in California.

And at Hollywood/Highland, giant aluminum panels and wall sconces arc upward in muted harmony. The theme there seems to be something between a subterranean space station, an “underground girl” or a whale’s belly, depending on which MTA consultant you ask.

“We wanted it to be interpreted in different ways,” said architect Doug Dworsky. “For me, it’s always been the belly of the beast.”

Not a bad metaphor for a project that for years has been little more than an irritant for many Valley residents, who grumbled about noise and traffic detours while the new stations were built.

The subway meant gritty dust blowing onto restaurant tables and late-night explosions as the tunnels crept closer. In North Hollywood, merchants complained that the construction crippled businesses along Lankershim Boulevard.

But with the Hollywood Freeway packed with more than 10,000 cars per hour each evening, MTA spokesman Rick Jager predicted that the new subway will soon look pretty inviting.

“I think once it’s up and running,” he said, “people will realize all the pain was worth it.”